Sunrise With Schubert: February 27, 2018

I read once where William James said, “I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.” Do feelings follow actions? I don’t know. James is called “the father of modern psychology,” so there may be some truth in it.

Victor Frankl, a survivor of the Holocaust noted how finding beauty in a sunset, while in a German concentration camp, helped some Jewish prisoners survive while others succumbed.

I do remember, personally, that as America drifted into a national state of nihilism that culminated in the Vietnam War, folk-music enjoyed a brief but emotionally charged revival in an attempt to prolong our descent into madness.

And let us not forget that Steve Martin once reminded us that one simply cannot frown and play the banjo simultaneously. I know that's true.

What does this all have to do with the price of Scotch? Well, I’m old enough to remember seeing, on television, the culmination of one of America’s other darkest periods. Actually, at the time I just thought it was just a bunch of old white men, half in uniforms, sitting around talking and disrupting the morning television programs.

It was, of course, the so-called “Army-McCarthy Hearings.” They would lead us out of one of America’s most awful national disgraces.

Known now simply as the “McCarthy Era,” that was a time that the American Spirit was hijacked by a man born absent of any normal sense of goodness or righteousness. It was if a malfunctioning gene had destroyed in him any modicum of empathy or morality. Many Americans revered him for reasons of their own, although he destroyed lives as casually as we might swat a gnat. It was a dark time.

It was a time when this man captured the support of enough Americans, through lies innuendos, braggadocio, threats, and manipulation of the press to chip away at the very foundations of our experiment in democracy.

It was a time when otherwise patriotic Americans allowed a charlatan to disparage the most cherished individuals and institutions of America, calling General George Marshall a traitor and claiming that the United States Army was riddled with Communist spies.

It was a time when a heartless demon redefined what was proper and fitting behavior on the part of elected officials.

It was a time when bad was called good and a malignant political parasite was called a patriot.

It was a time when our country watched with bemused silence, until one great man said to this Joseph McCarthy, “You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? Senator.”

That’s all it took. One brave man among millions of Americans. A man named Joseph N. Welch slew the seemingly unstoppable demon, by singing the truth. In doing so, he saved hundreds of lives from being destroyed. Hundreds of others had already been, in sham hearings. Those hearings, in fact, were held in committee rooms in the very capitol of our nation. It was to our everlasting shame, indeed a time of dark days.

Men who had stormed the beaches at Normandy and Iwo Jima, along with the families who had sacrificed to support them, had stood outside those committee room doors and refused to enter.

Why bring this up now? After all, I had not, at the time, reached the political version of what my up-bringers called “The Age of Accountability.” (That’s a religious term invented to help dampen a child’s primal fear of facing eternity in a fiery pit of unimaginable agony for rejecting the belief of its elders).

I have always known, however, that if I had been of age while those dreadful, spirit-killing hearings were happening, even if I didn’t have a singing voice, I would have rushed in, at the top of my voice, to save our country.

Planning how to cut food stamps?
I don't think so.